Book review: "Flirt" by Laurell K. Hamilton

(Holy hell, I just realized I haven't written a review of this series in more than a year. I'm such a slacker. I read them, just didn't write it up. This book is too short to write a review without giving away plot points. You've been warned!)

When I first heard this novella was coming out, I was both excited and not expecting much. I love the Anita Blake series--I re-read them about once a year, if not more. So I was excited there would be another one to add to my collection. But I was also worried it was going to be like Micah, the other novella in the series. I think I read it in the store in less than an hour, bought it just to have the complete set, and have never opened it again. Micah isn't my favorite character, so a book that was largely about his past, and Anita's stupid emotional issues, and them having sex .... just not interesting to me. I was worried Flirt would be a book all about Jason (again, like Blood Noir) or worse, Nathaniel.

But hooray, it wasn't! It was actually a very nice blend of present and past-style Anita stories. It starts in her office, with two clients wanting her to raise the dead: one out of grief, one for nefarious purposes. She turns them down, before going out for a kind of hilarious lunch date with Jason, Nathaniel, and Micah; there's some of the emotional shit-shoveling that's present in all the books, but it's not belabored, which is nice.

Two weeks later, Anita is abducted by two strange werelions on behalf of one of the crazy clients from before. Of course, with her menagerie of metaphysical wereanimals, all sorts of furry issues erupt. The ardeur plays a part, as does her ability to "roll" wereanimals. In the end, though, Anita beats the bad guys largely with her own powers, in a gruesome and terrible way. Really, the way the primary villain dies is pretty devastating. I like that, and also the fact that the reason for the entire plot is rooted in Anita's world, in her animating, rather than furry or vampire politics. It was a nice return to older-style Anita.

There were a couple of things that bugged me; one was that, as with the last Merry Gentry book, there were spots where some copy editor clearly was asleep at the wheel. Also, this is the third book in a row where Jean-Claude is totally off-stage. He's mentioned, but he's not seen or even spoken to. I'm sick of Jason and Nathaniel; we're overdue for some JC. Also, Richard isn't mentioned at all, not in passing, not even hinted at. I know it's a small book, and things had to be left out; but I really hope that Bullet, the next full-length book, brings back both JC and Richard.

Overall, I enjoyed Flirt a lot more than I expected to. It brought a smile to my face, and unlike Micah, it's one I'll re-read as I go through the series in the future.

Book review: "Divine Misdemeanors" by Laurell K. Hamilton

(Big spoilers if you haven't read through the last book; minimal ones for this installment itself.)

I've been waiting on pins and needles for this book for a little more than a year now, even since finishing Swallowing Darkness, which was just incredible. I couldn't wait to find out what happened after Merry and her entourage left the Unseelie court, to find out what they would do in Los Angeles, if Andais would leave them alone .... a lot of questions were answered, but a lot of new ones were raised too, so I was just incredibly excited to read Divine Misdemeanors.

It starts with Merry at a crime scene, where a number of demi-fey have been killed and staged to look like a children's book. The police are working it, but since Merry is working for her old detective agency again she's there to look at the scene as well. (It's a set-up very similar to the Anita Blake books, really.) Overall, I liked the book, although there were some issues I had.

The good:

• A lot more of it is her dealing with all the men in her life, and being pregnant, and day-to-day life. Which is interesting, and there are some very sweet, touching scenes.
• One thing I've always loved in both the MG and AB books is the inclusion of very authentic, grounding details that really make it seem like this is happening in our world--there's a lot of that in Divine Misdemeanors, which I really enjoyed.
• The overall tone of the book really was very happy--despite drama, and problems, and tension, you get a sense of Merry being settled, and happier.
• The crew from the Gray Detective Agency is back--Uther and Jeremy, at least, and Roane is even mentioned in passing. The Hart brothers are included as well, and Maeve Reed is at least mentioned.
• We see some of the lasting impact of Andais' insanity; we also see some people recovering from it.
• The soldiers Merry healed in the last book haven't just dropped off the face of the earth, which is a nice continuity.
  
• A new type of fey, a Fear Dearg, comes on to the scene, which is really interesting.
  
• Great sex scenes--there's a moonlit beach scene with Rhys that's really just incredible. There's also one with Sholto that if you really stop and take the time to fully envision it, is, uh, quite striking.
  

The bad, or at least not great:

• Although the murder case comes up several times through the book, it feels very much like a side storyline--but there's not a primary storyline, so the book feels rather unfocused.
• There's also next to nothing about either of the courts--Taranis is being accused in public of Merry's rape, Merry killed Prince Cel and tons of other sidhe, her grandmother was killed, she and Sholto were crowned ruler of the sluagh, she and Doyle were crowned and gave up their rule for Frost, and all of that is hardly mentioned. LKH has said that this is the beginning of a new story arc for Merry, and that it's a transitional book--but there's so little of the old, and only a half-step toward the new, that the book feels a little directionless.
• There's a weird "fairy godmother" character that's just sort of thrown in, and you think her presence is going to be really important .... and then she's just sort of dropped.
• I'm already sick of Merry commenting on her stomach still being flat, but she's pregnant. We get it. Really. You don't have to state that exact thing every time you touch your stomach.
• I love the sex; I really do. But there was a bit much of it. In a 333 page book, there are five sex scenes, with six of the men, three of them new.
  
• The narrating voice of Merry seems to be getting lost. Until this book, I could've read an excerpt without names or locations, and told you if it was a Merry Gentry or an Anita Blake book. But this one, there were many, many places where I was tripped up the fact that it seemed like Anita was suddenly in a faerie princess' story. There was even one scene that seemed directly lifted from an Anita book--Danse Macabre, I think--where Anita says she's Prince Charming, she doesn't need rescuing. I suppose some cross-over is to be expected when you have one author writing two supernatural kind of series--but there's been such a distinct difference before that I was surprised to see it.
• Copy edits appear to have been very, very sloppy. There are sentences that don't make sense because they're missing words, or their structure makes them say something different than they're supposed to. There are repetitious situations--for example, the cop named Lucy is told at the beginning of the book that certain demi-fey can become human sized, but half-way through the book she apparently doesn't know this. And then there's a spot that's just ridiculous: Rhys's matter-of-fact voice was my first hint that... "The barrel of a gun isn't a very friendly way to start a visit."

Although there were a number of things that bothered me, I didn't dislike the book. It just felt like fluff, especially after the incredibly action-packed Swallowing Darkness. So little of note happened that I feel like this book could be skipped without the reader being confused. I can recommend it because it was a pleasant read, but it's really nothing earth-shattering.

Short book review: "Haunted" by Kelley Armstrong

The premise of this book is interesting, as the main character is Savannah's dead mother, Eve. At the end of the last book, she made a deal to owe the Fates a favor in exchange for helping Paige, and in this book they call in the favor. Eve is sent into a hell dimension to track a chaos-causing spirit called a Nix, which possesses human beings and helps them commit horrible crimes. In a neat bit of historical inclusion, one of the Nix's victims was Lizzie Borden.

To trace the spirit, Eve moves through a bunch of different levels of the afterlife, sometimes alone and sometimes with the help of Kristoff Nash, Savannah's also-dead sorcerer father. While tracking the Nix, Eve also works through her obsession with watching her daughter and also her strange relationship with Kristoff--so in addition to the adventure/horror/supernatural aspect of the story, there's also a dose of romance.

I liked the book, though not as much as the one right before or after it in the series.

Short book review: "Industrial Magic" by Kelley Armstrong

I put off reading this one for a while, since Dime Store Magic didn't really thrill me. Once I started it, I was pleasantly surprised. Paige, Savannah, and Paige's Cabal sorcerer boyfriend Lucas have moved to Oregon and are living happily. Then Lucas' father shows up, wanting them to help the sorcerer Cabals with attacks on a number of their employees' teenaged children. At first they resist, thinking it's another ploy for the elder Cortez to lure his wayward son back to the fold, but eventually they agree to help.

I really liked this particular book; this was the first one in the series I had a hard time putting down. It was also a nice bridge to the next book: in addition to Lucas and Paige, we see the werewolf pack again, and the necromancer Jamie Vegas. Savannah's ghostly mother is part of the story too, which leads to the next book--which I rushed to read after this one. Becoming one of my favorite series.

Short book review: "Dime Store Magic" by Kelley Armstrong.

I'm way behind on my reviews; I've got a big list, but some of them I read months ago and have forgotten some of the finer details. So I'm going to do really short reviews.

Dime Store Magic follows the witch named Paige that we met at the end of the second book, as she struggles to raise Savannah, the daughter of a black witch who was kidnapped and killed. It didn't really hold my attention, and took me a while to get through it--partially because Paige's whining about her body issues pissed me off, and partially because she just seemed like such a weak, wishy-washy character the entire time. She also does some blatantly stupid things, like walking in to obvious traps.

It's not a terrible book; and we do get some story development. I recommend it as part of the series, but it's not the best.

First impressions book review: "Skin Trade" by Laurell K. Hamtilon (Anita Blake 17)

I've had the book for nine hours and I'm only 86 pages in. It's just not holding my attention, which is really unusual. Normally I'd be finished with it by now.

On the other hand, 86 pages in and no sex, which is an improvement--I think the first 86 pages of the last book were all sex.

Book review: Bloody Bones by Laurell K. Hamilton (Anita Blake 5)

Warning: Contains spoilers for earlier books in the series.

Bloody Bones is one of my favorite books in the series, because this is the first book where we really see Jean-Claude as a person, rather than just a scheming master vampire, and it's fun. We also learn more about Anita's deceased mother, and how her death affected Anita. Jason the werewolf is back too, being a pain in the ass as always.

Anita (and Larry Kirkland, animator/vampire hunter in training) goes out of town to attempt to raise centuries-old zombies from a mass grave that's been disturbed. A high-powered law firm is footing the bill; the ground was being broken to build expensive homes, but now the ownership of the land is being disputed. If the corpses are members of the Bouvier family, then the law firm is SOL--but why won't the Bouviers, who are poor, sell this out-of-the-way piece of land? Magnus and Dorcas Bouvier are interesting characters all on their own; it's cool to see another "fairy tale" sort of being living day-to-day in the modern world.

Of course, a simple animating job isn't all the story: the state police call Anita in to look at the murders of three teenage boys, who appear to have been killed with a sword by something with preternatural speed. Then Anita gets another call, to the home of a family who's daughter was found bitten and dead in her bedroom. While hunting the vamp that killed the girl, Anita encounters the sword-wielding beastie, and realizes she might be in over her head. To try to solve these murders (and a kidnapping), Anita needs to contact the local Master of the City--and for that she needs Jean-Claude. He flies into town and bunks in her hotel room (though she, of course, takes the couch). That's a very interesting proposition, considering that in the last book Jean-Claude essentially blackmailed her into dating him as well as Richard--and Anita doesn't deny that JC has "a cute butt for a dead guy".

This is definitely one of the high points in the series. Anita is still struggling with her love life, struggling with her powers, and fighting against her attraction to Jean-Claude. There's plenty of conflict, there's plenty of action, plenty of Anita being sarcastic and hard-asses, and also some naked Jean-Claude!

Book review: The Lunatic Cafe by Laurell K. Hamilton (Book 4)

Contains spoilers for the previous books in the series.

The Lunatic Cafe feels, to me, to be where Hamilton really hits her stride writing about Anita Blake. I can't put my finger exactly on why; things just seem to flow better. We start out with Anita meeting a client whose werewolf wife is missing, but he won't go to the police because she'll lose her job if anyone finds out she's a lycanthrope. After doing what she can for the client, Anita goes to the theater with local werewolf Richard Zeeman, who she met in the last book. She's then called away to visit a murder scene in a neighboring county. The local police were calling it a bear kill, but Anita thinks it's a rogue shapeshifter.

And of course, her night isn't over yet. Her reporter friend Irving is waiting at home to take her to a meeting demanded by the werewolf pack leader at a place called The Lunatic Cafe--turns out her client's wife isn't the only missing shapeshifter, and they want Anita to help them find out what's going on. Anita also discovers that her boyfriend has fought the pack leader twice, but refused to kill him--and considering how practical Anita can be when it comes to survival, that's something she doesn't understand. To top it off, while leaving the cafe, Anita spots her assassin friend Edward in the crowd, and he asks for her help identifying his target.

One thing I like about this book is how the storylines mesh, but don't all meld. In Circus of the Damned, all the storylines ended up leading to the same point, which was a little too convenient. I also like the dynamic set up between Jean-Claude, Anita, and Richard, and how Anita is struggling to choose what she wants her life to be: to continue with her current lifestyle, "covered in blood and corpses", or to try for a more normal life, with more normal hobbies. While she's struggling with this idea, she's also getting more ruthless and pragmatic, and less bothered by killing.

This is definitely one of my favorite books in the series.

Book review: Circus of the Damned by Laurell K Hamilton (Anita Blake 3)

Contains spoilers for the previous books in the series, Guilty Pleasures and The Laughing Corpse.

Circus of the Damned is the third book in the Anita Blake series, and I always seem to forget one of the plotlines, as it has several. At the start of the book, Anita has a meeting with two men from an anti-vampire group (Humans First). They try to convince Anita to give them the resting place of the Master of the City, so they can kill him. Although Anita is still royally pissed that Jean-Claude gave her two vampire marks, she doesn't betray his identity, and the two men leave, although they come back later for different reasons.

Anita then gets a call from Dolph, with the RPIT squad, to come look at a body with multiple vampire bites. To try to find out who is responsible, Anita visits Jean-Claude the next night, but he doesn't have much information. She does meet Richard Zeeman, a seemingly normal guy stuck hanging around the vampires, and also a shapeshifter named Stephen. When she gets home her assassin "friend" Edward is waiting for her, and threatens to torture her to obtain the identity and location of the Master.

And yet another person is looking for the Master--a rogue master vampire named Alejandro. He forces the first two vampire marks on Anita after attacking her. Along for the ride is Larry Kirkland, a new animator who Anita is training for Animators, Inc. There are a lot of events and storylines jammed into this one book, and occasionally it gets a little confusing.

The writing is about on-par with the first two books in the series; we get a bit more development of vampire lore and laws, and also a bit more on shapeshifters. There's some development of the relationship between Jean-Claude and Anita as well, including how drawn she is to him while simultaneously wanting to be free of him--with all the people seeking the Master, and all of them wanting him dead, will Anita finally get rid of JC? The threads of the different stories eventually tie together, and the climactic battle scene at the end is pretty damn cool.

One thing that does bug me, about the early books in the series in particular, is the attention to describing Anita's clothes. If it's something that serves a purpose, because for some reason her clothes are important in a coming scene, I'm all for it. But I don't need a description of every item of clothing, including her socks. The times when she's discussing the trouble with hiding a gun in womens' dress clothes has a point; pointing out the blue Nike swoosh on her socks just because is overkill.

In the end, it's tough to write a review of this book because it is so packed full. The narrative is hilariously sarcastic and cynical, as usual, and again we get everyday, normal sort of details that really flesh out Anita's world. I don't like it as much as the first couple of books in the series, but it still kept me reading.

Book review: The Laughing Corpse by Laurell K. Hamilton

Contains spoilers for the first book in the series.

The Laughing Corpse (Anita Blake #2)takes place a month or two after Guilty Pleasures. It's a relatively short book (under three hundred pages), and because we got to know Anita Blake in the first book, we can jump right in to the story.

Anita and her boss, Bert, meet with a client in the first chapter, a man named Harold Gaynor, who wants Anita to raise a 300-year-old corpse. Anita turns the job down, because raising that old a zombie would require a human sacrifice--but Gaynor isn't happy with that answer, and doesn't let it go that easily.

Simultaneously, the RPIT squad is investigating a series of gruesome murders that appear to be the work of a rampaging zombie. I'll be honest, the first time I read this book I may have blanched a bit because of this storyline--hey, I was young and innocent! Hamilton doesn't shirk when it comes to describing the partially eaten remains of suburban families. There's a particularly detailed scene where Anita and another police office try to out-gross each other at a crime scene.

In trying to find the origin of the killer zombie responsible, Anita visits the local voodoo priestess, Dominga Salvador. Because of this, we meet Anita's mentor and trainer, Manny Rodriguez, and find out something about his past. We do see Jean-Claude in this book, in his new role as Master of the City, but he's not involved much in the main plot--instead his screen time is mostly to continue the tension between JC and Anita. Willie McCoy, who Anita knew pre-vamping, is also in the book, and Anita continues to be unsettled by the fact that she doesn't despise him for being a vampire.

One of the things I love about the Anita Blake books, especially the early books, are the little details thrown in. In this book, while visiting the morgue, Anita describes a guard station that "looked like a WWII bunker, complete with machine guns. In case the dead should rise all at once and make for freedom. It had never happened here in St. Louis, but it had happened as close as Kansas City." Those sort of casual add-ins tickle me.

I'd rank The Laughing Corpse a little above Guilty Pleasures; the story is fast-moving, all the pieces tie together, and we get more of a sense of Anita--including her powers and her growing practicality and ruthlessness. I rushed out to get the next book in the series as soon as I'd finished this one.

Book review: Hex and the Single Girl by Valerie Frankel

Hex and the Single Girl follows nine days in the life of Emma Hutch, a modern-day witch. Her "powers" are heightened senses (especially smell), and what she calls "telegraphopathy"--the ability to plant in image into someone else's mind. She earns her living by using this power running her own business, The Good Witch Inc. Lovesick women come to Emma, and she basically stalks their crushes, subtly touching them to implant the image of Emma's client.

As the book starts, Emma is on the verge of losing her apartment. Eventually we learn that an Enron-like scandal resulted in her losing all her savings, and she's been struggling since. We also learn that she hasn't had sex in a long, long time--because halfway through the foreplay the men go soft and bail on her, which has resulted in Emma having some self-esteem problems. She also is terrified of ending up dying of a brain aneurysm like her mother.

At the beginning of the book, a new client named Daphne offers Emma $5k to work on a highly eligible bachelor. Unfortunately, a chance encounter leads to Emma and the bachelor being smitten with each other. There are hints that either Emma has more witchy powers than she thought, or the bachelor does too, but we never really find out if either is true. There's also a whole storyline involving Emma's lost savings and a former client's bastard boyfriend. Another storyline involves the a model friend of Emma's best friend; the model was involved in an advertising campaign with Daphne. Emma's best friend falls for Daphne's assistant, and the model's lawyer falls for Daphne's other assistant--just an example of how everyone is connected to everyone in the book, with Emma at the center.

I was equal parts amused and annoyed with this book. Some of the situations seemed honest and were hilarious; some of the puns were just way too on the nose, and were groan-worthy. Sometimes Emma seemed like a strong character, but other times she was very morose. For example, she looks at a piece of toast described as "blackened, hard, dry, overheated, tasteless, useless, and unappetizing". She then thinks, "I am that toast." Blech. Emma is also both deeply romantic and Sex and the City-style blunt sometimes. She ends up being "saved" by love, being shown she's "worthy" by a man, and living happily ever after thanks to a too-perfect male protagonist--things which are standard in a romance book, but still a bit obnoxious.

Still, the book was enjoyable enough. I'll probably read more of Valerie Frankel's books.

Book review: Big Girls Don't Cry by Cathie Linz

I came across this book by browsing "similar titles" on Amazon. I'd started out with some chick-lit book, and basically just started adding titles to my Booksfree queue. I thought this might be a nice light read.

When I got it in the mail and read the back cover, I got a bad feeling: "Cole is still the golden boy, a sexy charmer with commitment issues and a short attention span--until Leena and her curves strut into his life."

Nevertheless, I gave it a try. I made it about 80 pages in before I put it away in disgust. This is not a "chick lit" book. It's not an empowering story for fat girls (which is the type of book I was looking at when this popped up). It's a romance novel that was too long for Harlequin so it got published on its own.

It's full of cheesy set-ups--for instance, the main character, Leena (who just took total control of a vet's office and basically hired herself) starts hyperventilating (because her life sucks so much), and the male romantic lead who she's known for an hour solves this by .... kissing her. I gave up at the point where Leena is feeling insecure so dares said romantic lead to "prove" he's attracted to her with a make-out session. Leena's always doing things like putting her hands "on her curvaceous hips", blah blah blah.

I skipped to the end; it ends exactly as you'd expect. The "fat" girl with big city dreams realizes her home town isn't so bad, and throws away a second career chance for a guy (because, you know, you can't have both!) and a life in said town. It's a fairly standard story, but not one that impresses. I won't be checking out any more of Linz's books.

Book Review: Jemima J by Jane Green

(This is a pretty ranty review, I really didn't like this book.)

I'd actually read this book before a couple of years ago; I decided to re-read it because I remembered hating it but not why. What I remembered of it seemed fairly harmless. Well, I re-read it, and I still don't like it. There are several different issues with this book, so I'll try to address them separately.

First, the way this book is written is .... unique. Some of it is written from Jemima's point of view. Some of it is written in third person observing Jemima. And some of it is written in omniscient third person, watching other characters. Sometimes this narrator criticizes, sometimes hints at the future, sometimes empathizes. The entire thing is also in present tense. Having not read anything else by Jane Green, I don't know if this is typical of her writing or not. But it got old and annoying. Especially annoying was the way, when in third person, the characters' full names were used over and over--as if there were another Jemima in the book we might get confused about, or something.

Secondly, Jemima herself has little in the way of personality. She's every fat girl cliche you can list: She hates herself and her body. She's consumed with thoughts of food. She overeats; she eats mindlessly; she eats in secret. She's an emotional eater. She deludes herself into thinking what she eats in healthy when it's not. She's unhealthy--can't even walk up a flight of stairs without taking a rest. She has a "pretty face". She's not a virgin, but has never had good sex or a real relationship. She has no friends and blames it on her weight. She lets people walk all over her. She's always going to start a diet "tomorrow". She's so smart, and so talented, and so funny, and so special ... but nobody knows it because she's fat! Boo hoo! And, naturally, she's in love with the office hunk who's "out of her league"--because she fat. Although there's nothing terribly awful about the character, there's nothing special either--she's sort of your generic fat girl as pictured by someone skinny.

*****SPOILERS*****
Thirdly, the story itself is ... well ... sort of weirdly contrived. Essentially, Jemima becomes friends with her crush, Ben, but he then goes to work somewhere else. She meets someone from California on the Internet and drops a bunch of weight, then goes to meet him. At first it's all fun, until she discovers--gasp!--he likes fat girls! In fact, he has a fat girlfriend, but cooked up this scheme to get a "trophy girlfriend" to show off around LA. And somehow the fat girlfriend is okay with this. Because she "loves" him and he "needs" this. Jemima gets out of the situation, and in LA runs into Ben, who has seen her around, but didn't recognize her and thought she was the most beautiful women ever. She and Ben end up together.

Um, what? I assume this is supposed to be some sort of irony--oh, look at Jemima, she lost a bunch of weight for a chubby chaser! Ha ha! Oh but look, fate conspired to bring her and Ben together in LA, how lovely. And Ben's not a total douchebag for not loving her when she was fat, because she was his friend! So obviously he's not a shallow scum-sucker!

I'll grant this: the idea was cute, and original. It was just too thin a premise. And all the smug third-person narration about fate and how amazing Ben is, yadda yadda, got on my nerves.
*****END SPOILERS****

However, I think my biggest problem with this book is the fact that the author has very, very obviously never been fat. I could try to write a cohesive paragraph about this, but there's too much, so I'm resorting to lists.

1) Jane Green obviously has no idea what 200 pounds looks like:
Jemima supposedly weighs 217 pounds, yet the book is ripe with descriptions like "she rolls over onto her side, and tries to forget her stomach weighing down, sinking into the mattress". Chairs squash her thighs painfully. She can't cross her legs. The most offensive of all comes when describing a "chubby chasers" porn: Jemima says she used to look like these women, who are "not so much a woman, more a mountain of flesh" and who have "acres of flesh that would completely obliterate her genitalia". So 200 pounds is a disgusting pile of asexual flesh, with body parts that are capable all on their own of impacting furniture. Oh really? That'll be a surprise to my friends who weigh 255 or more like me, who still have husbands and boyfriends and one night stands. And can still sit on regular furniture and sleep in regular beds.

2) At one point, the third person narrator asserts that "yes, it is possible for Jemima to put on two or three pounds overnight". This just rubs me the wrong way. Anyone can do that. It's called water retention. But of course, it's weight, and she's a mindless fatty, therefore it must be fat. Ignorance.

3) Along with not knowing what 200 pounds looks like, the author seems to have a general disconnect with weight and clothing sizes. Jemima is 5'7", and yet at 120 pounds supposedly wears a size 8--which, if it's a British sizing, would be an American size 10. To juxtapose, my mother, at 140 and 5'3", wears a size four. At another point, Jemima puts on "26 inch" waist jeans. That would actually be an American size 2!
You could say that's just lack of research on Green's part, and maybe it is. But with 2 being the new 4, and 0 being the new 2, and popular culture vilifying fat, it just plays right in to the "you can never be skinny enough" BS. After all, if a 5'7" women at 120 pounds is a size 8 (horror of horrors!), then what would she have to weigh to be the "perfect" size 0?

4) The rates of weight loss given are completely unhealthy, and are basically a result of anorexia. Jemima is described as eating lettuce for lunch, and lettuce and chicken for dinner, while exercising prodigiously. She skips meals to exercise. She loses 22 pounds in a month, and the author's tone is congratulating. It's even more congratulating when she states that Jemima has lost "almost a whole person" later on. Ninety pounds is a whole person? Are you kidding me?

5) Jane Green apparently thinks that a pound of fat takes up a LOT more room than it does. Jemima at 217 pounds has a "quadruple" chin. She has no visible knees or waist. At 182 pounds, she merely has a "double chin", and miraculously has knees and a waist. And that 22 pound loss makes her "infinitely less huge" than she was before, and makes her face "unrecognizable". And yet, the crush, Ben, doesn't notice her weight loss. Even though he's sooooo wonderful and she's sooooo different.

6) Jemima loses 80 pounds in five months. She's been fat her whole life. And yet, miraculously, she has no stretch marks, no loose skin, nothing to clue in her Internet boyfriend that she used to be overweight. In fact, when she loses weight, she becomes perfect. Beyond perfect, actually. Strangers stare at her and hit on her. Men driving by in cars call their friends and say they just fell in love. The message is clear, and obviously part of the cultural fantasy of being thin: if you lose weight, you will become a traffic stopper. So stop eating, fatty!

7) Jane Green obviously buys into the fact that 1) all fat people overeat and 2) all fat people overeat out of boredom or depression. Because as soon as Jemima becomes interested in the Internet, she magically quits wanting chocolate! And as soon as she stops eating chocolate, or bacon sandwiches, she starts losing weight! And even when she starts eating normally again after acting anorexic for five months, the weight doesn't come back on like it does in the real world of starvation dieting.

8) If a guy likes fat girls, he's obviously a twisted pervert. Oh, and his mommy must have been fat.


Oh, at the end of the book Green makes a token effort at self-acceptance. After an emotional binge-eating episode (WHAT? THIN PEOPLE OVEREAT?!!!!@11! Oh wait, deep down she's a disgusting fatty. I forgot.), Jemima likes how her stomach is rounded (from food? WTF?). She realizes her low weight looks more like a boy than a woman (because she has small breasts. Again, WTF?), and decides--all at once--that "I'm not going to binge anymore, but I'm not going to stay obsessed with being as skinny as I can be." At the very end, she goes up A WHOLE SIZE (oh god) and is suddenly "curvy and feminine" but still eats "whatever, whenever" as long as its "reasonably healthy". Oh, and she gets the guy and the dream job and her life is perfect.

If the book didn't piss me off so much, I could've summed up the entire thing with one word: FAIL.

Book review: Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir

When I was in high school, my mom was reading a book called The Six Wives of Henry VIII. At one point, she copied down one of Henry's poems to Anne Boleyn and gave it to me ("Green Grows The Holly"). Being young, American, and ignorant, I had no idea who or what the hell she was talking about. I think I had, at that point, seen the movie Elizabeth with Cate Blanchett (and oh, Joseph Fiennes!), but I hadn't thought about anything beyond that. I think it was the poem that led to me reading the book. I'd expected it to be dry and boring--after all, it's history! But I loved it, and it sparked a waxing and waning interest in Tudor England that's lasted for about ten years. Typically something will happen to re-awaken my interest, I'll re-read Six Wives, continue with whatever else originally sparked it, and then ... um ... get distracted with a-ha or House or god knows what else.

All of this is to say two things: I knew of Lady Jane Grey, but not in depth, and when I saw Alison Weir had started writing fiction novels, I jumped in and read Innocent Traitor. And although it was interesting enough, I still put it aside for almost a week to read other things, something I almost never do. A book this size I normally would've finished in a few hours if uninterrupted, but it just couldn't hold my interest that long.

At first, I thought it was because of the simple fact that I already knew the outcome. I knew Jane ended up being queen for nine days and then got her head chopped off. So I thought that was what was holding me back. However, I eventually realized it was more complicated. The first issue, I think, as the fact that the entire book is in first person ... but from the perspective of quite a few peoples' internal dialogue. I can think of at least seven narrators off the top of my head. Honestly, it just gets confusing after a while, especially since there's no distinctive "voice" to each. They're all in the same thoughtful, self-aware, carefully conscious voice, and the only way to tell them apart is by the headings or the events.

The other issue is the fact that I just didn't much care for the character of Jane after her early childhood. I swung from pity for a child who was abused, to disbelief that someone so young could suddenly grasp the fundamental difference between Protestantism and Catholicism, to annoyance that she suddenly was all holier-than-thou to everyone around her, and eventually a sort of disbelief. I realize that when reading these sorts of books, you had to accept the fact that women had few personal freedoms and were the property of men. I also realize that religion was an unchallenged, permeating tenant of peoples' lives.

But when Jane, suddenly confronted with being queen because of others' machinations, convinces herself that God wants her to be queen to keep the country Protestant, I just gagged. Even moreso when she feels sorry for her husband who raped her (which we got two or three graphic descriptions of). As sad as it was that a brilliant, introverted woman got pushed on to the throne and ultimately beheaded, by the time the book ended, I was basically sick of Lady Jane.

Book review: Locker Room Diaries

The Locker Room Diaries: The Naked Truth About Women, Body Image, and Re-Imagining The "Perfect" Body by Leslie Goldman

(This isn't the most cohesive review; the book itself is fragmented into very delineated chapters.)

Leslie Goldman spent a long time eavesdropping in her locker gym, interviewing women, and making pithy observations about women and their attitudes toward their bodies. Goldman is recovering from an eating disorder, which she mentions quite often in the book, and I think it's great that she's so open about it.

Throughout the book, at various points and in line with various subjects, Goldman calls for women to accept themselves as they are. She describes a multitude of bodies, in various conditions--fat, thin, tall, short, white, black, Hispanic, young, old, pregnant, post-pregnancy, etc. Through out she describes women traipsing around the locker room in various states of being, not to mention nudity. Unfortunately, her emphasis on appearances undermines the message. At one point, while discussing flaws, she actually encourages readers to look for flaws in others, stating that "schadenfreude can be your best friend" in the locker room. In short, if I were new to the gym, this book would make me more concerned about being scrutinized in the locker room.

In addition to the locker room, Goldman has a clear obsession with exercise in general. She clearly looks down on people who don't exercise. I believe at one point she expresses admiration for an anorexic at her gym who exercises three hours a day, seven days a week. The overall impression is that if you don't exercise, or don't exercise enough, you're not as good as Goldman.

There are also places where she just flat-out goes on tangents--for example, about people talking in the steam room. She also complains about womens' beauty rituals in the locker room. Now I admit I'd probably laugh if I saw a women take a break from blowdrying her hair to blowdry her nether regions--but Goldman apparently thinks that's just disgusting. She also criticizes women who blowdry or do their makeup while topless--while also stating that she does the same. She at one point says she'll stop walking around topless because some of the women she talked to were made uncomfortable by it; but she also talks about encouraging other women to go topless.

Gym-specific locales aside, the author's language also clearly belies her spoken message. I've already returned the book, but the example that jumped out at me the most is that assertion that someone's 36C breasts were "respectable". It really bothered me all the way through, and I think if I were less secure in myself this book would have made me even more critical of my "flaws".

The most depressing part to me was probably at the very end, when Goldman interviewed older women. Although some of them did express a certain comfort with their bodies, their comments seemed overwhelmingly negative. The same could be said about Goldman's interviews with women who had had children--such as the women who said she didn't want another baby because of how it made her body look, and another one who described her post-pregnancy breasts as "a nipple on a board". There were a couple of women who said they looked at their bodies in different ways now--able to create and sustain life, etc.--but most of them seemed devastated by how giving birth had changed their bodies.

There were some good things about the book. I admire the intent behind it, even though I don't think Goldman really believes in accepting people as they are. Goldman is also quite witty and amusing. I appreciated her efforts to include everyone--not only the various gym patrons, but the people who work at the gym, including the largely Hispanic cleaning crew and how their culture influenced their views regarding body image and nudity.

All in all, I think Goldman's intentions were great, but I think the concept would have been better served with a larger sample size (rather than just her $140/month gym's clients) and by less of an author bias. I believe Goldman was trying to give women confidence in their bodies by describing the flaws and conditions of many other women; unfortunately, she mostly manages to re-enforce the idea of women critiquing one another to feel superior.

(Goldman also re-tells a hilarious story from Kristy at She Just Walks Around With It, which Kristy calls "Why Yes, Cute Firemen, That IS My Ass")

Book review: Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

I don't even remember now who suggested the Anita Blake books to me. It took me a long time to start reading them. The first time I picked one of them up, I was totally turned off by the sensual covers--not because I was prudish, but because they looked like the kind of books I didn't go for, which is to say romances. The second time, I was more interested, but after reading a couple of pages I was so frustrated with Laurell Hamilton's writing style that I put the book down in disgust. Why I gave them a third shot I'm not really sure; I think I was just at Barnes & Noble one night, depressed and looking for something not too deep to distract me from my wallowing. That was about five years ago. I believe I finished Guilty Pleasures that night, and was hooked from then on--the year wait in between books is as torturous as waiting for Harry Potter was.

In Guilty Pleasures, we're introduced to an interesting world. Anita Blake lives in Saint Louis, Missouri, in modern times ... but in her world, vampires and werewolves, witches and fairies, and all manner of other things that go bump in the night, are real. Vampires are legal citizens, with the same rights as anyone else--they can vote, they have to pay bills, they can be arrested. But because vampires have super strength, and can bespell humans with their powers, "due process" is a little different for them, and that's where Anita comes in: she's the legal vampire executioner for the state of Missouri and surrounding areas. So when a vampire sucks a nice citizen dry, a judge draws up a warrant, and Anita goes after said vampire--with wooden stakes and holy water, sure, but also a sawed-off shotgun. The vampires call her The Executioner, because she has the highest legal kill count of any vampire slayer.

But Anita does something other than kill vampires: she's also an animator, someone who raises zombies for a nice cushy fee. As part of her job with Animators, Inc., Anita is also on retainer for the Regional Preternatural Investigations Team (RPIT). So when a serial killer starts killing vampires in St. Louis, RPIT calls Anita in to help them find the monster killing monsters. Then Anita gets dragged into the investigation by someone much less civilized: the Master of the City, a 1000 year old childlike vampire named Nikolaos who threatens to kill Anita's friend Catherine if Anita doesn't help them.

Guilty Pleasures is fairly clean--I had no problem letting my fourteen year-old cousin read it. Anita visits a strip club (which is where the title comes from), and also attends a "freak party" with definite sexual content, but there are no outright sex scenes or graphic descriptions. The book reads less as an erotic thriller than a detective story with supernatural characters, and it's more about getting to know Anita and her universe.

In this book, we learn that Anita's mother died when she was young. Her father re-married someone who was the opposite of Anita's mother, which contributed to Anita's apparent low self-esteem regarding her looks. She was raised Catholic, and discovered her zombie-raising powers when she accidentally raised her childhood dog from the dead. Anita at the start of the series is rather emotionally reserved, living alone and working a lot. She doesn't take crap from anyone, sometimes going overboard to prove that being short, female, and well-endowed does not make her lesser than anyone else. There are times I laughed out loud from the sarcastic comments in the narrative, which provide a nice spark of humor amid the violence and mystery.

We meet the sexy and manipulative vampire Jean-Claude, who's got the hots for Anita and who she resolutely shoots down--for now. We also meet Edward, Anita's assassin friend who the preternatural community has nicknamed "Death"--what else do you call someone who goes after the beasties with a flame-thrower? Anita meets with Rudolph Storr (Dolph), head of RPIT, and also his "sidekick", Zebrowski. I think there's a brief glimpse of Anita's boss from Animators, Inc., Bert Vaughn. We get enough of all these characters to see them as real, but don't get to know them completely.

It can be difficult to introduce a lot of characters in a first book without it being overwhelming, but Hamilton manages it. She also manages to make the "Anitaverse" rich and detailed, combining details from reality with little factoids from the fantasy side woven in without being heavy-handed.

All in all, this is one of my favorite books, from one of my favorite series. At 272 pages, it's a quick read, well-worth checking out.